The thing is, this stuff has been hashed out in the open source community before Makerbot filed their provisional, hence it was already obvious to anyone acquai

The thing is, this stuff has been hashed out in the open source community before Makerbot filed their provisional, hence it was already obvious to anyone acquainted with the art. Here's this from 2008, for instance - http://forums.reprap.org/read.php?1,8028 http://forums.reprap.org/read.php?1,8028